Snow on Snow on Snow

It’s snowing gently here right now, as it has on and off since the beginning of the year. This is my favorite way to spend the cold winter months in Ohio, snow on snow on snow. Every few days a fresh coating collects on the more tired, collapsed flakes, filling in the hoof prints and rabbit trails and paw marks created by the various sized beasts outside our home.

If it’s going to be this cold, at least it can also be beautiful, and quiet.

The snow falling outside has the exact opposite effect on my soul as that of my social media feed. I had taken a break from both Facebook and Instagram beginning last summer but recently added Instagram back onto my phone. It started back as just a quick way to check in on and connect with my kids, sharing funny clips and such, but the habitual scrolling has slowly seeped into my routine again, and even just a few minutes in that frantic, dopamine hit space seems to make me anxious.

As I settle in to read or watch TV with Brandon, lately I find myself compelled to divide my attention, between a good read or a funny show and what’s happening over on Instagram. After a few pages of my book, I can’t seem to help it. I open the app and check to see if anyone has said anything new, shared anything lovely, or liked one of my posts.

Maybe it will be different this time, I think to myself.

It only takes a couple of flicks against the screen before I’ve left the territory of calm landscapes and photos from friends and find myself bombarded with loud ads, prophetic criticisms, self-righteous finger pointing, and outrage, left and right.

I do not want to succumb to the anxiety of these times, but it so quickly accumulates, rage on rage on rage.

The thing about freshly fallen snow is that it’s porous. It’s made up of countless ice crystals and air pockets, trapping and scattering sound waves, which is why the land is so silent when it snows. It is a natural dampener. When the noise of this world becomes too much, the falling snow mutes even a mother’s “shh,” forming an acoustic blanket. All is calm. All is quiet.

It isn’t that the mud and muck of the season is erased, but at least for this instant, it’s covered by something, transformed by something, a necessary reprieve from the ugliness.

Perhaps, when I stand for a couple of seconds in its lolly-gagging fall to earth, I can catch a little peace on my tongue, ingest a bit of beauty, and look for ways to fill the rage on rage on rage with my own coating of snow.

I’m Almost Done Reading…

The Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of The Little Flower by St. Therese of Lisieux. There’s much to admire in Therese’s telling of her life, especially her adoration of God from such a young age, and her ability to hang onto that love, even in the midst of long stretches of suffering and God’s silence. It is wild to me that she entered Carmel to dedicate her life to Christ at the age of 15 and only lived to be 24, a fact I had to keep reminding myself about as I’ve been reading. There’s a lot to underline and star, but one of the latest bits that caught my attention was this lovely note about prayer:

“Prayer, for me, is simply a raising of the heart, a simple glance towards Heaven, an expression of love and gratitude in the midst of trial, as well as in times of joy; in a word, it is something noble and supernatural expanding my soul and uniting it to God.”

I was really struck by that line because we often think of prayer as a laundry list of requests that we make to God. And so much of prayer is about the work that God is doing on our hearts and in our souls, uniting us to him, connecting with us in ways that if we don't pray, we're not open to throughout the rest of our days.

So in the moments that we are praying in whatever kind of activity we're in, that simple raising of the heart is just such a really beautiful illustration of how we can connect with the creator of the universe.

I hope to continue to be a source of little joys during the coming days and seasons.

One of my fears, I think I've probably articulated here before, is that the elevation of little joys might seem like ignorance or Pollyannishness when there's so many trials and tribulations happening in the world and so much suffering happening in the world.

But I truly do believe that we are called to shine a light on the beauty and the goodness and the real qualities of love that appear in the world and that are all around us, as the song goes. And so I hope to continue to be a source of that illumination as much as I'm able to do that kind of thing, and that it would be received as a little open window into the beauty that is all around us.

So that’s it from me this week. I hope you have a wonderful week!